I have also read that if the flow from the Chatahoochee is not sufficient to cool the downsteam plants that it will be possible to bring in power from elsewhere on the grid. I’m sure there will be an economic impact but I’m not seeing predictions that there will be a widespread electricity outage.

Although ‘water shortage’ is the theme here, I find the power shortage potential more electrifying. Ahem. Has anyone on AWS investigated the anticipated power loss to Atlanta, as the FIRST major side effect of water loss? Here’s my reasoning.
Today, the AJC reported the 61 county area lessened their November water consumption by 15%. 6% of this reduction came from residences and businesses while the remaining 9% came from the shutdown of two hydroelectric plants. Both plants were reporting financial losses due to the t shutdown. One was shutdown for equipment repair, the other due to ‘drought restrictions’. They consume hundreds of millions of gallons daily when they are operating. FYI: SEPA is the entity that reroutes electrical power by the way. If you google drought summit june 2007 you will find an ACE pdf, (see page 4) where the SEPA rep is saying that Allatoona loses 25% of it’s hydroelectric generating capacity when at 828-830 ft. Well, it is now at 818 ft. On the lanier side,AWS bloggers, quoting the Corp, have stated that the two big turbines stop at 1035 ft or so….with a smaller one at 1020.
So it appears to beg a question of SEPA or other public authorities…how may power days are left and how much more will it cost in the future? I have read about the much reduced water consumption by GA Power, for instance, once they installed cooling towers. The water savings were tremendous. SAK

So the question is: How many power days do we have left when Lanier hits Deadpool and the turbines stop? Which will run out first, water or electricity…and why? All information (certifiable) is appreciated. SAK

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

45 million in 1958 is over 311 million in 2006. That seems on the surface to be a reasonable cost for a dam.

Re: the damn cost… that 45 million is probably in 1950’s money. If so, care to scale it to 2008 dollars? I bet you have to add a couple of zeros prior to the decimal point.

Since they’re actual numbers, “maximum” doesn’t really have a meaning here - if they were inflow numbers, that would be different. The max inflow for example, for Atlanta is 750 million gallons I remember reading, from 2005.

I’d agree - if the additional population isn’t drawing from the ACF, then argueing about sprawl would be at a minimum, misleading. I don’t have any numbers on where the population growth in Atlanta is occuring. I wonder where we’d get that info?

I would also ask if it has been verified that all those sources are from the ACF basin?

Either way - 150 MGD or 200 MGD. I think either of those numbers could be considered valid so I don’t think we have any real argument there.

This also brings up another point that I was pondering. (I probably spend way too much time pondering this stuff.) I see a lot of the attacks on Atlanta citing figures for population growth - implying that water use is growing in proportion to population growth. While that may be true to some extent, the great majority of growth is in suburban and exurban counties - many of which do not draw their water from ACF. It is simply a lazy argument to inflame tempers - not draw attention to facts.